


Who Has Two Thumbs And No Daddy Issues?

by LostOzian



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Bonding, Canon Compliant, Canon Relationships, Fluff, Ironic Shenanigans, Post-Game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 17:11:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10971690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostOzian/pseuds/LostOzian
Summary: Rose Lalonde is who.





	Who Has Two Thumbs And No Daddy Issues?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mostlyharmless](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mostlyharmless/gifts).



There were some unprecedented logistical challenges regarding seeding the growth for three separate species, with ‘some’ being an understatement.

Jade and Kanaya had their hands the fullest ensuring that the genes they were sequencing belonged to the right species, and that no tragic genetic mistakes made their way into the gene pools (trolls had some defenses against that due to their slurry-based reproduction, but Rose didn’t know all the details on that). John wanted to assist, but he spent a little bit too much time documenting the occasion with his phone in Rose’s opinion. Then there were a ton of other challenges regarding how to expect the new population of largely babies to survive and develop civilizations for everyone to enjoy at a later date. The best anyone could come up with was to recruit the carapacians and have them serve as parents/lusii to all the baby humans and trolls they were about to clone until the humans could raise each other and the trolls domesticated appropriate new species of _lusus naturae_. But that started up a discussion about food, and shelter, and how many people the earth could sustain without the advances of modern technology, and it became apparent these challenges needed solving before anyone got too far.

Rose took up a pet project surrounding some of the old escape pods on the meteor, which had been non-functional (in addition to useless) for almost the entirety of the journey. If they were to get at least one of them in working order, they could use it as a blueprint to alchemize everything else they'd need for the others. But Rose felt like she needed one more person to help her along, perhaps someone with some engineering expertise as well. Her choice in no way represented any ulterior motives.   

"It really is a shame about LOTAK…" Rose tried to break the ice.

Dirk slid out from under a truck-sized pod and sat up, adjusting his shades before rolling to the next one, lying down, and assuming the position. He answered, "I guess. Never got attached to it much as a planet. It's a reasonable sacrifice to get the job done." That reply sounded fairly noble, but was somewhat undercut by the fact all Rose could see of Dirk was his tight, white leggings. Even with the nature of the work at hand, the God Tiers hadn’t seemed to realize they could change out of their outfits yet. Rose had a feeling she’d stay in her Seer of Light robes until she was safe and sound on a habitable, populated Earth.

As for the questions Dirk’s answer raised, Rose wanted to ask about his definition of a 'reasonable sacrifice,' considering that Jane had needed to stitch his head back onto his shoulders at the end there, but that felt rude. What qualified as small talk among gods? It had been easy with Roxy, both of them brimming with excitement and relief to meet one another. And while Rose wanted to extend an olive branch to her final relative, the enigmatic alternate Strider, she couldn't get a read on whether attempts to forge friendship would be met with the same unconditional acceptance. The best clue she had regarding Dirk's temperament were one, Roxy liked him, and two, Dave managed to like him in spite of severe and reasonable baggage.

She looked around the hangar a little more, taking down in some notes how many pods there were and what exactly needed to change about each of them to make them fly. The bay doors were open, showing a massive and downright Arcadian field of grass and wildflowers stretching to the horizon. "Never felt attached to all those tombs and krypton particles?" she continued, hoping it sounded casual.

"The loss of the planet specifically created for me as the crucible of my heroic journey is kind of a fucking bummer, but it never held promise for me in the first place. We were a void session. None of our planets actually had the mechanisms yours did. Apart from some lore strewn about, we didn't have any of the necessary constructs to advance.” Dirk adjusted the roller board a little, which exposed more of his lower half, almost emphasizing the poof of his pants. “The blast missed my apartment, so it doesn't really matter."

"It just feels unfair that we all kept our planets and you lost yours. Even John restored LOWAS from whatever extra-dimensional quest he fulfilled."

He rolled out from under the pod in order to give Rose a shrug. "Some things don't get restored. I'm just gonna be grateful that the important things did."

"Like what, for example?"

"Calliope, for starters. Follow that up with Roxy and Jane."

"How sweet."

"Yep, wanting my friends alive and whole is just so fucking saccharine." Dirk lay back down on his board like he was going to go under again.

"There's no reason to shy away from that. It's nice. There's people you like and you like when they're here."

Dirk stopped and sat up again, turning his head to look more directly at Rose. She felt more confident in parsing Strider Shadespeak after three years spent in person with Dave, though he tended to lose his stoic persona at the drop of a hat without a screen to filter himself. And not that the screen had even helped much.

"I'm getting the feeling you're pulling a Fisher Price Psychotherapist act on me," Dirk said.

"You're where I get it from, so I would hope you'd get that feeling."

"Wait, where you get it from?"

Rose waved a hand like this revelation was totally no big deal. "My overly cerebral psychologist streak reminded Roxy of you. I believe that was meant to be taken as a compliment."

"She sure as fuck wouldn't be trying to insult you," Dirk said. "I just want to extend my condolences for the shitty genes, then."

"Excuse you, I _like_ being a snooty know-it-all. It's central to the Rose Lalonde brand."

"I'm not going to put you down for turning coal into a diamond, but I still want to apologize for giving you coal."

"This sounds like it has to do more with your self-loathing than my intellectual presentation."

Dirk turned his head a little, which Rose translated as evasively looking away. "Right, fuck. That should probably get set aside until we've had at least twelve more conversations about topics excluding major personal damage."

"I mean, I don't mind it. I rather appreciate the direct approach in this regard. Cutting to the 'heart' of an issue."

"I'm gonna dignify that pun with a response once and only once." Dirk took a bracing breath and then answered, "Can you shed some 'light' on your reasoning there?"

Rose smiled. "Skirting around some questions regarding the subjective morality of traits, I get the sense that even if you possessed the genes ideal for creating perfectly well-adjusted progeny, you would be uncomfortable with sharing them."

Dirk hissed like Rose had delivered a scathing burn. "Okay, yeah, you are _good_ at that. Top fucking marks across the board."

Rose pinched her Seer robe and did a little curtsy. "Why, thank you. But that just confirms I'm right, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, but it's not that simple.” Dirk leaned back on the pod that he should have been repairing, losing interest in the task in favor of this conversation. Rose couldn’t blame him. “Parenting, fatherhood, it's more than just adding genes to the slurry. Spend even five minutes listening to stories about Mr. Crocker and that’s confirmed. Fatherhood is about supportive care, and smoking pipes and bringing home bacon and putting the fridge in front of the door so your daughter doesn't get assassinated."

"How... specific?"

"What I want to say is, the fatherhood question has come up before. It's not for me, and trying would cause more harm than good."

Rose nodded, and swept a bit of her hair behind her ear. "Would you at least put the fridge in front of my door?"

Dirk didn't say anything for a second. "If you’re forging some kind of new euphemism for use on our new Earth, I think you could do better."

"I mean it literally. If you believed the threat of assassination against me to be eminent, would you put a fridge in front of my door to protect me?"

This time, Dirk didn't say anything for five seconds. "…No? Don't take this as a disinterest in your protection, but fridges in front of doors aren't my style. You'd probably see something more along the lines of a puppet ambush trap followed by a katana-based decapitation." Dirk seemed to pause. "Though, that sword's broken now, so I think I'll need to use a backup weapon."

"There's a fresh one currently lodged in the Condesce's back if that's of any interest to you. We’d just need to swing by Derse to pick it up."

"It's tempting. But that's one Roxy stole from the doomed universe, right?"

"Would that matter?"

"Maybe. I guess, I feel a little choosier about swords and what they might have been used for previously. A tyrant-slaying sword sounds badass, but I don’t know who else that sword has hurt."

The pieces clicked together, and Rose nodded. "Understood. Well, ostensibly we're not fighting wars anymore. Then you could either re-assess the need for a whole blade at a later date, or just use half-bladekind. Dave could give you a few pointers for getting the most blows for your boonbucks."

"This is all a remarkable tangent away from the fact that you asked if I would literally put a fridge in front of your door, which is a little concerning since I can't choose which of a multitude of conclusions you want me to draw about what the hell you meant by that."

“Would you believe I was stalling for time to figure it out myself?”

“I would, but that doesn’t change my need for an answer.”

Rose had a sense of the idea in her head, of why she had asked an objectively stupid question about fridges, but putting it into words would need a delicate touch. “When I was growing up, my mom… Roxy, she raised me on her own. She was more interested in martinis than men, as far as I can remember.”

“Huh,” Dirk said. “That doesn’t fully sound like Roxy.”

“Which part?”

“How she’d choose to remain alone in a world with the option to _not_. She had a whole planet's population to choose from in terms of companionship. It’s not my intention to build up to any kind of ‘yo mama’ burn, but it’s like you’re describing a cat who won’t touch a scratching post.”

“I think that had more to do with the impending presence of Sburb in our lives. My mom knew something about the company that developed the game out of whatever ancient ruins supposedly provided the code. There was a lab next to our house with the spirograph logo carved all over it. That might have explained the lack of a life partner.”

“So what you’re building up to is you’ve never had a father.”

Rose smirked. “Top fucking marks, across the board.”

Dirk fiddled with one of his fingerless gloves: maroon, with some oil stains on them. “Is that something you feel like you were… deprived?”

“I think the effect was a net neutral,” Rose said. “I had a lot of time to think about this on the meteor. Having a father wouldn’t have made me wear any less black lipstick, or read any fewer Wikipedia articles about psychoanalysis, or stopped me from researching the zoologically dubious. And when I was young, I explained the absence away with a trite fantasy about the man who jilted my mother and left her with a baby daughter and a career as a scientist, and that she just never had time for love after that. But the concept… intrigues me.”

“The concept of a father?”

“Yes.”

Dirk didn’t say anything for a moment, and Rose had run out of things she felt would be coherent. She wondered a bit about whether the ability to resist spilling unfiltered streams of thoughts at a moment’s notice was also a trait of Dirk’s that Rose had inherited.

“Do you think your mom and Dave’s bro knew each other?” Dirk asked.

“I can’t say. There’s nothing to have prevented them from meeting, but also nothing that would have drawn their paths to cross apart from their future guardianship of Dave and I.”

“More ambiguous bullshit, then.” By now, Rose had to say the ‘repair escape pods’ task that she and Dirk had supposedly come together to complete was totally forgotten. Just as planned. “I guess it’s hard for me to understand where you’re coming from with this father-absence talk. You probably have enough context regarding Dave’s upbringing to know I am the last person who should be taking care of anyone.”

Rose had to laugh at that one. “Do I look like I need a Band-Aid and a bedtime story? The amount of fatherly affection that I actually need is roughly equivalent to zero. Anything severe enough to require that should be brought to the attention of Mr. Crocker.”

“So what exactly are you looking for here?”

She almost felt like the word didn’t belong to her, but she could think of no other way to describe what she wanted. “…Irony?”

Now it was Dirk’s turn to laugh, almost a squawk of a sound, sudden and loud but dissipating quickly. “The ironic father treatment?”

“I mean, what else would it be but irony for a sixteen-year-old boy to treat a similarly aged girl like his daughter?”

“Fucked up is what it would be.”

“We have demonstrated such a total lack of interest in each other that it would shock and perplex the Freudian psychoanalysts of yore. I’d go so far as to theorize that we are possibly the two most immune parties to the influence of an Elektra complex.” Rose felt a bit like she was poking a bear with a stick, but she had fought alien tyrants. She could survive a bear, and she might never live down if she never tried. “Come on, _Papa_. Would a true Strider ever back down from an ironic stunt this _choice_?”

Dirk looked at his feet for a moment—or, perhaps just in the direction of his feet. Rose still couldn’t pinpoint exactly where his gaze settled. But then he stood up, stretched his legs, and wagged a finger in Rose’s direction. “Young lady, you should know better than to speak to your father like that.”

“Oh, are you about to send me to my room?”

“If this sass doesn’t stop, I just might.”

“My room is on another planet.”

“I don’t see what the problem is. Either cut out this attitude or I’ll have to put the foot down and dock your allowance.”

“Papa, no!” Rose pleaded, thinking of the accumulated billions of boondollars shared between everyone in the party. She flung a hand over her forehead and moaned, “How will I ever afford tickets to Homecoming without my allowance!?”

“Help your mother with some chores, and see if she’s willing to pay you for them. I think mowing the lawn will net you a sweet five bucks.”

“We have a lawn?” Rose asked.

Dirk gestured out the pod bay doors at the acres of untouched grassland. “Yeah, that lawn.”  

“That’s not a five-dollar lawn-mowing. I want at least fifteen for that kind of labor.”

“I work hard all day too, missy, and that’s the value of mowing. Better hit your books hard so you don’t grow up to flip burgers.”

“That would be easier if your generation didn’t ruin the labor market by failing to retire,” Rose said.

“I thought I told you to stop getting fresh with me,” Dirk responded. “What’s so important about the Homecoming anyway? I thought you didn’t care about the game of ballfoot.”

“I don’t care about the sports, I want to ask Kanaya to the dance. I can’t do that unless I can afford our tickets.”

“Who’s this Kanaya?”

“She’s my girlfriend.”

“She hasn’t kissed you yet, right?”

“No, sir,” Rose promptly lied.

“What do her parents do?”

“She doesn’t have parents. Her lusus was a virgin Mother Grub who foreswore breeding duties to raise her.”

“Can I meet her Mother Grub? Just so I know what kind of family this Kanaya comes from.”

“She’s dead.”

“Shit.”

Rose broke character a bit to laugh. “That’s a dollar for the swear jar, Papa.”

“Fuck the swear jar.”

“Two dollars.”

“Are you just going to extort the cash you need out of me on profanity counts?”

Rose held out her hand. “Five dollars and I won’t tell Mama.”

“I knew it, you’re gonna bleed me dry.” Dirk picked a piece of paper and a pen out of his sylladex and started scribbling on it until it had a central portrait of Hella Jeff, the number ‘5’ in each corner (backwards in one) and the title _CASSH MONYE_ on the top. “Now don’t spend it all in one place. And I expect this Kanaya girl will seek my blessing before she so much as holds your hand.”

“Understood, Papa.” Rose took the ‘monye’ and put it in her own sylladex, unable to suppress a smile. “Does this mean that Dave is in trouble because he’s already kissed Karkat?”

“No way, I’m imposing a bullshit patriarchal double-standard on you and your brother. He could fuck a dozen trolls and not get in a lick of trouble, but if you so much get blown a kiss I am gonna go postal.”

“You bastard.”

Dirk gave Rose a thumbs-up. “Now aren’t you glad I’m not really your father?”

“Are you kidding? I’m thrilled we got to properly keep this on the un-awkward side of ironic. Have you seen Dave struggle to call Roxy by her name yet?”

“My god.”

“Yeah. It gets _bad_. But it’s also kind of charming. I slip up on occasion, but I’m the one who lived with a version of Roxy who I loved very deeply but incompetently for thirteen years. Dave found out we share genes at the end of that span of time and found himself incapable of using her proper name for at least fifteen solid minutes upon meeting her.”

Dirk laughed again, that seagull-squawk laugh. “That sounds like an incredible sight to have witnessed. Maybe our skills aren’t best used here. I think Roxy could be persuaded to jump in on these ironi-mom shenanigans.”

“That’s a fantastic idea. And what are we going to do, run out of time to clone babies?”

“Honestly, I think the well-meaning souls that we call friends might need a reminder of how many babies is too many. This planet won’t support an infinite population after all.”

Rose and Dirk start to walk out of the pod bay, back to the cloning apparatus. “And how many babies is enough?”

He leaned over to knock against her shoulder. “Just two. A boy and a girl. Two perfect little freaks of nature I’m proud to know.”

The sentiment hit Rose like a syringe in the neck. Sharp, precise, calculated, and full of a full childhood’s worth of fatherly affection. She could open a case study to investigate the ironic trappings that allowed Dirk to deliver such a sentiment without combusting, but she’d find time to grill him on that later. Time to enjoy the feelings for what they were.

**Author's Note:**

> I told you she doesn't have daddy issues.


End file.
